Bariloche

The chonologically last instalment, Greetings from Uruguay, had me in Carmelo waiting for the Saturday evening ferry.

The bars were showing soccer. Uruguay was not involved in the rugby world cup, so why would their television devote time to it? I found an Internet cafe that was open and followed the score on the official web site. O woe for NZ.

So it was with shock and a heavy heart that I queued to board the Delta Cat II. This is a modern vessel, but not as rocket propelled as the Buquebus that I left Buenos Aires on. The sun was low, but still in the sky, so we had daylight for the start of the crossing.

The wharf is a few hundred metres up a tributary of the main river, so we started gliding down between tree-lined banks. There was actually nearly half an hour before sunset, motoring between low islands. Some had only grasses and rushes, others had trees. A vast improvement on the featureless water all the way to Colonia del Sacramento. There was enough light to see by for about another 30 minutes and then it got very dark.

There were very few navigation lights that I could see, but the skipper had radar, a chart plotter and plenty of experience so we didn´t hit anything and fetched up in Tigre on time.

This was the third time I had entered Argentina and the first time I had been asked to fill in a customs declaration. I confessed that I was carrying bee products (honey), but the customs officer shooed me through. He didn´t want his evening spoiled by people carrying illegal honey. The same honey had been in my pack on the previous two border crossings, but no-one asked about it.

An information desk in the port building directed me to a nearby B&B, but it was full. The port area had lights and grass and a McDonalds so it was perfectly safe to scout around, but the tourist information office was closed. That´s pretty reasonable for 9:30 on a Saturday night. I reasoned that the train station might have cheap hotels nearby or an information desk so I toddled over there. No hotels and no info desk, but I asked at a snack stall.

The lady on my side of the counter conferred with the serving lass and they agreed on a place but, they said, it was quite far and dangerous to walk. The lady came with me to the taxi stand to make sure the driver knew where to take me. Wasn´t that kind?

The streets didn´t look dangerous to me, but it was a drive of several minutes with many turns. Walking would have meant almost certainly losing the way. I was dropped at a large residencial but, alas, they had no rooms either. There were no rooms in anywhere in Tigre that night I was told. It was now after 10pm. Even if there was another train, it would deposit me in central BA after 11 o´clock. Not a welcome prospect.

The couple running the residencial did know of an expensive hotel in another suburb. What was the alternative - sleeping in the park? They generously telephoned and booked me in and then telephoned for a taxi. It was a long ride and the hotel was not easy to find. Journey´s end was getting on for 11pm.

Hotel del Casco is a boutique hotel and very expensive. However, it had a room free and I graciously accepted the neccesity of luxury. The ensuite bathroom had both a bath and a shower. There was a chocolate on the turned down sheet. I had a long shower and used lots of the shampoo and conditioner. The TV had at least 5 sports channels, but they were all in earnest after-match discussion mode, except one that was broadcasting baseball. I don´t know the game well enough to enjoy watching it, so I stretched out in my king-size bed and fell asleep.

Next morning I was either the first guest up, or the last. Anyway, I had the breakfast room to myself. I made the most of a first-class breakfast buffet and the best coffee I´ve had in South America. I selected some fruit for later consumption and souvenired the partly used soap and shampoo.

When I checked out it was the first time I had used my credit card for anything but a cash withdrawal since Lima in June. The scarcity of hotel beds in greater Buenos Aires was due to a convention of dermatologists, the clerk explained.

I don´t think many of its monied guests leave Hotel del Casco carrying a pack and walking to the train station. But the rest of the day was plain sailing. The train took me to Retiro station, which is next door to the long-distance bus terminal. I found a convenient overnight bus to Bariloche and bought a ticket. I watched the last 20 minutes of S. Africa vs Fiji in one of the cafeterias and had a satisfying lunch.

There was a moment of confusion when I tried to board the 14:00 hours bus, instead of the 14:05. Well, only the 14:05 was showing on the electronic departure board. But that was quickly resolved and we set off in a bus so modern the upholstery still had a whiff of that ´new vehicle´ smell.

The Via Bariloche cama service has restored the reputation of Argentinian buses. It was very comfortable. There was coffee and a sandwich for afternoon tea and a hot meal with wine for dinner. There was even champagne, but it was served so late I was too tired to want any.

We cruised smoothly over the province of Buenos Aires. I have come across so much flat land in South America. From the top deck of the bus I could see to the horizon in every direction and it was FLAT. There were fences and trees and cows and buildings all on flat, flat land. I even imagined I could see the curvature of the earth. This continued until the daylight failed 6 hours into the journey. As far as I could see it was still flat when I woke to visit the loo in the night.

In the morning we were gently but firmly awakened. And there were scrub-covered hills outside instead of grassy plains. Were we on a different planet? To our left, so I could not see it well, was a slow-moving river. Either that or an immensly long lake. Coffee and breakfast helped to get the brain working properly.

The timing of the wake-up call was just right. By the time breakfast had been served and the empty trays gathered in, there was just enough time to pack up and put my contact lenses in before we drew up in Bariloche bus terminal a quarter of an hour early.

San Carlos de Bariloche is soooo like Queenstown. All that´s missing is jet boating. It is on a lake with tree-clad mountains at the back, a large ski-field nearby and all facilities for tourists, including over-priced restaurants. Many Swiss have settled in the area and it has the additional attraction of chocolate-making. Many shops in the town sell nothing else. One of the more prominent chocolaterias is called Rapa Nui. Why is it named after Easter Island? A Spanish-speaking Austrian at the hostel went in and asked. "No reason."

I stayed at Hostel 1004. The unusual name has a very good reason. It is on the 10th and top floor of an apartment building near the lake in Bariloche. It is apartment 1004. Simple. The views over the lake from the common room are stupendous.

Having got my bearings I set out to enjoy the mountain scenery. A local bus took me along to withing easy walking distance of a national park. I followed a trail through the woods where the heard-but-unseen bird was abundant. Amongst a school party coming the other way I spotted a youth with iPod earphones in each ear. I fear the birdsong was wasted on him.

In the afternoon I took a boat ride on the lake to visit Isla Victoria. The significance of this island was lost on me because I could not understand more than 5% of the commentary. On the Altiplano I usually understood 50% or more of what the Spanish-speaking guides said. Anyway I had an hour to roam this island before we re-embarked and carried on to a special area that is a park in its own right within a national park.

The tree that makes this area so special is the arrayan.

It has lovely cinnamon coloured bark and there is one peninusla where it particularly flourishes. We were only allowed 45 minutes there, but that was ample to go round the walkway and take many photos of the beautiful trees.

That evening the hostel organised a "wine tasting". Everyone bought a bottle of wine, they were all carefully opened and set out on a big table, and then the music was turned up and it was party time! No-one made any tasting notes. I can´t explain why, but the ambience of Hostel 1004 generates a special atmosphere. Conversation flows particularly freely. It is one of the sleeping places I can most heartily recommend.

On Wednesday we all got up a bit late for some reason. Patrick, the Spanish-speaking Austrian, planned to trek around all of Bariloche´s chocolate shops. I opted for a more prosaic walk up Cerro Otto. The tramp was harder than I expected. The last kilometre was through and around patches of snow. This would not have been such an issue if I had remebered to change into my tramping boots, but I set off in sneakers. Silly Bill. However, the views were glorious.

Back in town I elected to cook myself a steak meal in the hostel´s excellent kitchen. The supermarket offered, amongst other labels, wines of the "Aberdeen Angus" brand. I am not making this up. There is a photo of the label in the camera. It was not a premium product, so I selected a bottle of the syrah for about $4. It wasn´t as good as the meat was, but it was better than some of the wines tasted the previous evening.

Today I have moved down the road to El Bolson. It´s a very laid back town and I like it. The craft market today has some interesting stuff, but there`s no room in my pack. However, it provided some interesting snacks for lunch and some very good locally brewed beer.

Oh dear. This reads like I´m becoming an alcoholic. I promise it´s not true, dear readers.

Please leave comments or send emails. It´s good to get feedback.

The Salar de Uyuni - Part 2 complete

The first part of this 3-day adventure was posted on 17 September, if you missed it. I was in a Toyota 4x4 being driven across the Andes with 3 Frenchmen and a Spaniard. A companion "jeep" from the same company carried a French couple and their French-speaking guide. We left this collection of intrepid voyagers motoring through remarkable rock formations on Day 2.

On some computers the pictures now look strangely dark. They were quite bright and normal when I loaded them. I hope they are OK on your screen.

An unscheduled stop. The other "jeep" had pulled up and raised its bonnet. Our driver stopped and a rapid conversation in Bolivian Spanish ensued. Both drivers then grabbed spanners and tackled the problem.

For the mechanically minded I can report that the area of concern was soon narrowed to the pedals and the solution involved tying something with a plastic supermarket bag. I bet that´s not in the workshop manual.

For the next 24 hours we normally followed the companion vehicle. If we were ever ahead our driver would periodically stop and check that the other vehicle was still following.

On through the mountains we went. It still seems wrong somehow that so much of the route was parched and yet there were lakes.

A puna flamingo photographed with all the zoom my little camera could manage. I was sure I wasn´t holding the camera steady enough, but it came out anyway. I should have used my little tripod, of course.

These lakes were smaller than Lago Colorado, where almost all the puna flamigoes breed. However, they had good populations in the non-breeding season. I think I saw some andean flamingoes as well but the main distinguishing features are the colour of the legs and the amount of black on the beak. Neither of these is easy to pick out at long range.

We visited lakes Ramaditas, Honda, Charcota, Hediondo and Canapa. Lunch was delayed until the last lake. This was a popular spot with the jeeps of several companies. It has therefore become known to the local wildlife.

This andean fox was the most daring of the scavengers.

There were a few caracaras gazing hopefully towards the lunch site, too. The fox would have to be pretty nippy to get in before these feathered pirates made a swoop.

Smaller birds fluttered to and fro pecking at the breadcrumbs and fallen rice grains.

The flamingoes peacefully ignored the leavings of the humans and carried on filtering brine shrimp from the salty water.

The foreground is tussock and other grasses. the white bit is ice. The pinkish dots in the water are flamingoes. As you can see, the fine weather continued. There were a few clouds about, but I guess they were camera shy.

In the afternoon we encountered our first patches of salt desert. These were a rather grubby white. However, there were reflective enough to generate the first mirages. Vincent told us that they would not appear in snaps, but we still tried to photograph them anyway. I did take some photos of the terrain, but the main desert on the final day was so much more spectacular that I have not bothered to include the Day 2 pictures.

Our destination was another night´s lodging in the wilderness, but this time in a salt hotel. That is, quite literally, a hotel built out of salt. Blocks are cut out and used as bricks.

The furniture is made of salt, too. These tables and stools show the layers very well. We asked why there were coloured strata in the salt bricks, but did not get an explanation.

The bed bases in our rooms were also constructed from salt. These were smaller than the dormitories of the previous evening, with only two beds per chamber. By some accident I got a room to myself.

Either we were significantly lower then the previous night, or the salt is a better insulator, but it didn´t feel nearly so cold. This emboldened one of the French guys to take a shower. He returned very quickly complaining that there was no hot water, despite the specific promises that had been made. Foolish man. Did he not realise that this was Bolivia. Hot showers indeed.

The reason for the non-delivery of hot water was very vague, but it transpired that nothing could be dome about it. Could the dirty tourist get a hot shower in the morning? Not a chance. The water will be frozen in the morning.

Enjoying dinner off a salt table. From left to right the smiling faces belong to Vincent, the keen photographer; Guillermo, the French-speaking guide from the other jeep; and the lady from the other jeep.

If you wanted salt on your food you used the salt cellar. Breaking off bits of the furniture was just not done.

Vincent gave us a slide show of his photos. Not only did he have a large, expensive camera but he was travelling with a laptop in his luggage.

We were allowed two handfulls of twigs in the stove tonight. When half the lights were turned off to save power (the only electricity was from a solar cell) that was a clear sign that we should toddle off to our salt base beds with their piles of thick blankets.

For reasons that were never very clear to me we had an early start in the morning. No-one attempted to have a shower.

The sun rising above the salar.

I nearly missed breakfast because I chose this morning to drop a contact lens. I had carefully placed my universal plug in the sink so I knew is wasn´t down the drain, but it took an age to find.

However, I did get some breakfast and no-one seemed peeved that my pack was the last one to be loaded.

Today was THE day when we were shown the biggest and whitest salt flat in Bolivia. This was what the whole tour was named after.

The first 100m from the salt hotel was pretty much like any jeep track and then we were on the desert, with a blinding white surface stretching before us.

The jeep could have driven anywhere it wanted, but the drivers were very careful to stay in the tracks of previous vehicles and minimise the impact. The result was rubber-blackened trails on a brilliant white background.

At one stage we stopped so that the tourists could get a close up view of the salt. It was hard and crunchy to walk over.

The irregularities in the surface are due, if I understood correctly, to the way the water evaporates out of the ground. These are only a few millimetres proud of the base level. They were barely noticeable from the jeep.

As you can see, it is spirit-level flat. Every summer the rains come and the top of the salar is dissolved. The water then evaporates and the surface is renewed. I forgot to ask, but I imagine that the tracks across the surface are completely erased in the wet season.

There were mirages in almost every direction with mountains appearing to float above the horizon. On one occasion it seemed that I could see another jeep flying across the salar.

Our first destination was Isla de los Pescadores (Fishermen´s Island). There is something a little strange about an island in a sea of salt, but that is what it is.

Nowadays there are no fishermen, of course, but the island is still worth visiting to see the forest of big cactus plants. It is managed by the Bolivian equivalent of DoC and an entry fee is levied.

These are a classical dry land cactus, with vertical concertina folds to allow expansion when water is abundant and can be stored, and contraction when it is being used by the plant.

You should be able to see a cactus-covered hillside here.

They are generously coated in the traditional long, sharp, straight spines. Bolivia is home to many species of cactus, but none more spectacular than these.

We had about an hour to scramble around a path that led to what I think was the highest spot on the island and take photos. I was down to my last set of camera batteries so I was not as extravagant as Victor.

Energy could be spared for a picture that not only proves I made it to the top, but gives a basis for understanding the size of these plants.

If you can see the picture properly you will note that I had not shaved for several days.

Someone has calculated that the plants grow only 1 cm per year. One large specimen has been measured at 12.1 metres and the label solemnly declares that it is 1,210 years old. Happy birthday, cactus.

On my way back down to the jeep I saw some birds with yellow bodies and black heads, a sort of Jolly Hangman outfit.

Off we went again, speeding over the salt and keeping to the established trail. The early start finally caught up with me and the smooth ride lulled me into a snooze.

I woke up as we drew level with the Salt Hotel. This one is not only built oout of salt it is right in the salt plain.

Lonely Planet advises that this structure is illegal and that waste disposal damages the natural wonder that we have come to see. However, the authorities seem unwilling to do anything about it.

The swimming pool is simply a hole in the ground filled with water. It is, of course, salt water. Saltier than the sea I judged.

Jeeps are not the only way to explore the salar. These cyclists had arrived the the salt hotel from Uyuni and set off towards Isla de los Pescadores, following the tyre tracks.

There was an end-of-adventure feeling as we drove the last few kilometres to the endge of the salar.

Here the salt is exploited commercially.

First it is scraped up into little heaps. I was told the perfectly good reason for this but confess I have forgotten it.

A silly pose for the camera.

The heaps are then shovelled onto trucks.

And taken to the nearby settlement of Colchani where the salt is bagged.

This was also the site of the salt museum, two rooms with some crude salt carvings and poorly stuffed birds. It was the poorest value I received, even though it was only 5Bs.

Colchani also boasts several souvenir stalls so I perused these and explained several times that my pack was too full to accomodate the offered trinkets.

In the meantime our lunch was being prepared.

This vicuna was roaming Colchani, apparently without an owner. It was not tame and spat at a couple of tourists. However, it behaved itself while this picture was taken.

Lunch was served in the building behind me. As we finished, another group passed by. Amongst them was Henk Konijnenbelt, whom I had first met on the Lake Titicaca trip. His family had returned to Amsterdam, but Henk had a little more holiday time and was making a whirlwind tour of Bolivia.

We had time to confirm that my email had been received and that we were both well before Henk had to rush to his jeep.

My departure was not far behind.

We had now left the salt desert, but there were still mirages. I tried one more time to potograph the mountains apparently floating above the solid ground. Can you see it?

There are many stories of bad jeep drivers on this tour. There are some that get drunk and even fall asleep at the wheel. Our driver had been a model of sobriety.

I was thinking how well the trip had gone when we pulled up. This driver had put his head under the bonnet once or twice a day to make sure everything was running well so I was not concerned. Only this time there was a problem. We had run out of petrol.

The driver was properly embarrassed. He had driven the route many times before and there was no good reason why petrol consumption would have been higher than normal. We were, he assured us, only 10 minutes from Uyuni.

He flagged down the next vehicle headed our way and begged a lift into town. We stretched our legs and kicked stones into the dust. I looked around for birds but had no success. I did find a little memorial by the road. I couldn´t understand the inscription. Maybe this was someone who had been killed on the road. There did not seem to be any buildings nearby.

Our driver was back with a can of petrol sooner than we expected. He had hired a taxi for the return journey. The taxi was not a 4x4 and drove very circumspectly through the dust. In fact, we had refuelled so quickly that we got back to Uyuni before the taxi.

We had one last stop on our itinerary. This was not a natural wonder, but the "Train Cemetery".

Bolivia once boasted a more extensive train network that it has today. As rolling stock becomes surplus to requirements something has to be done with it. In Bolivia it is taken to Uyuni and left in the sun.

The cemetery is mostly, but not exclusively, the last resting place - or is that rusting place - of locomotives. Anything that can be removed has gone, but the shells of these steam locos sit in the sun for any visitor to clamber over.

Quite how some of them got there is a mystery, because there are gaps in the tracks. You can see how the front wheels of this locomotive are sitting tidily on rails, but the big driving wheels have sunk into the sand.

All that was left was to drop us off in front of the tour company´s office in Uyuni. Goodbyes were said, and promises made to keep in touch by email, although no mails have actully been sent.

I chose a modest hotel just along the street, the Victoria. A sigle room with shared bathroom was a mere 25 Bs. The shower in the shared bathroom was one of those electric heater at the showerhead jobs. But this one actually produced reasonably hot water. Shame on me for scoffing at Bolivian showers.